The First Superman/Shazam Battle

I bet you guys all think you know about the first Superman/Shazam battle, right?

 Wrong.

Let's travel back to 1967, five years before DC licenced the Fawcett characters, to Action Comics #353. Zeus and the other Greek gods are enraged when the Oracle of Delphi reveals that, in the future, everyone will forget the Greeks deities as Superman eclipses their legend.

Their solution? Create a warrior who has all their powers combined to kick Superman's ass! Behold the power of SHAZAM!:

Wait...ZHA-VAM?!?! Really? Zeus, Hercules, Apollo, Vulcan, Achilles and Mercury?!?

The whole concept is pretty amusing. First DC sues Fawcett into the ground over Captain Marvel being too close a copy of Superman, and then DC turns around and creates their own unauthorized SHAZAM ZHA-VAM clone to fight Superman. Oh, the irony.

Oh, but that's not enough for Otto Binder and Wayne Boring. Nope, we've got to give ZHA-VAM even more powers:

So they send their god-powered golem into the future to kick Kryptonian butt...

How can Superman answer this?

What?!?

Wait--how did Superman get his own "god-belt"??

Yup, Neptune revels in the chance to thwart Zeus's plans, so his homies make Kal-El his own belt.

What ensures is the goofiest super-battle in history. Enjoy!

And, in what it's hard not to view as a thinly-veiled comment on DC's destruction of Fawcett and Captain Marvel...

And you know what? ZHA-VAM was still better than the current Geoff Johns-driven take...